About These Blogs: The JPL Science & Technology Blogs are a way for our researchers and technical staff to give first-hand accounts of the activities that are going on at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. A cross-section of our staff contribute posts about the tasks they are currently involved in for NASA and JPL. These blog posts are meant to discuss technical topics. Selected comments that are on-topic are published and are moderated.
Yesterday the NASA Global Hawk flew over Hurricane Earl for about 8 hours. It took off from NASA's Dryden facility at Edwards AFB near Mojave, CA at 9 pm the previous evening. After climbing above 50,000 feet to get out of airline traffic lanes, it flew across the southern US to the Gulf and across Florida, and acquired the storm 8 hours later. At that time it had climbed to 60,000 feet. Although the Global Hawk flies itself ...
During the Juno Critical Design Review (CDR), a question was raised whether the power cycling of the TWTA (electronics box) on the Telecom Panel could adversely thermal cycle the other electronics boxes mounted around the TWTA. This action item was assigned to me to evaluate the expected thermal cycling affects could be expected during typical operations.
Using the Thermal Math Model (TMM) developed earlier, I set the model up for a transient case that would simulate a science pass expected ...
Today, it was JPL’s R&TD, DRDF and SURP Poster Conference. This is an annual event organized by the Office of the Chief Scientist and Chief Technologist (OCSCT). It presents the latest advances in science and technology funded by JPL’s discretionary funds, the Research and Technology Development (R&TD), Director's Research and Development Fund (DRDF), and Strategic University Research Partnership (SURP) programs. I was one of the presenters because I received the Lew Allen Award for Excellence last ...
This MOHAVE 2009 Campaign was a great opportunity to meet young, and less young, scientists of various horizons. Among the youngest were two wonderful graduate students, Monique Calhoun from Howard University, Maryland, and Corinne Straub from University of Bern, Switzerland. Monique started her first graduate year just two weeks before the beginning of the campaign, while Corinne had already completed one year. This blog is posted on their behalf. Two interesting contributions, the MOHAVE 2009 ...
Last Thursday, October 15, was an exciting day for bloggers. It was the Blog Action Day, an annual event that bloggers around the world post about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs, with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance. This year, the topic was climate change. I represented JPL to write a blog about the roles of clouds play in climate change and how NASA JPL contributes to the studies of clouds and climate change (see http://blogs.jpl.nasa.gov). ...
MOHAVE 2009, or “How Dry is the Atmosphere in Wrightwood?”
Well, just check this picture and you will have an idea right away…
Ironically, the “Sheep Fire” which started Saturday October 3rd, 2009 in Lytle Creek Canyon, propagated up the mountain 10 miles farther within 12 hours in an average ambient relative humidity of 45% and near-freezing temperatures! The top of Lone Pine Canyon, where the San Bernardino County Fire fighters successfully stopped ...Continue reading this entry
I work closely with my colleague, Dr. Jonathan Jiang, to study interactions among aerosols, clouds, water vapor and precipitation. Besides analyzing satellite data, we plan to expand our work to use the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) model. Combining multi-satellite observations, we can obtain correlations between various measurements; however, the causal relationships can not be easily determined. Thus, we are going to use a dynamic model with interactive aerosol-cloud module to study the ...
Recently, I have been given the opportunity to represent the lab in a variety of situations: in Europe as a representative for a US/JPL contribution to an ESA-led mission, as an early career hire (ECH) in a briefing to Lori Garver (NASA deputy director) during her visit of JPL, and this coming November as a woman at a conference entitled “Women in Astronomy and Space Science 2009.” These opportunities have been a great honor and I am humbled by the level of confidence the lab has had in me, having ...
As a follow-up to my previous entry regarding the bonding issues of the thermal spreader, I was able to complete a Thermal Math Model (TMM) to verify my hand calculations. The TMM results confirmed that even with a “dry” mount, meaning there was no bond material and only conductance due to the mechanical fasteners were used, there was sufficient thermal margin that the electronics boxes would not violate their AFT requirements. However, by having a good “wet” interface, meaning a uniformly filled ...
I have not blogged in the last two weeks as I was occupied by two week-long meetings in a row. The first one was the Cloud-Climate Feedback workshop hosted by the Keck Institute for Space Studies in Caltech, organized by Prof. Yuk Yung and Dr. Joao Teixeira. It was a very enlightening workshop. Students and postdocs got together with a number of world-renowned experts on clouds studies and had in-depth discussions about front-edge science regarding cloud climate feedbacks. Scientists shared their ...
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